Label: NoBusiness Records

1996年P.S.F. Recordsの[Uzu]へのリリースへと繋がるベースの偉人らのデュオ録音!!米ジャズベーシストの偉人バール・フィリップス、日本フリージャズ界の重鎮コントラバス奏者である吉沢元治のデュオが、1994年の春に山口のカフェで行ったライブ録音。2部構成からなる演奏は全体を通してリスナーを釘付けにする緻密な構成となっており、両者ともアンプを通し音色の幅を広げ丸みのある低音の響きを創出。一部録音では電子音を織り交ぜた不思議な弓弾きによる持続音の層が出現します。





Colleagues and friendly rivals throughout their occasional associations, bassists Barre Phillips and Motoharu Yoshizawa were also pivotal pioneers on their shared instrument. Oh My, Those Boys! documents a concert by the pair at a Café in Yoshizawa’s native Japan in the spring 1994. Part of the performance was previously released under the auspices of producer Takeo Suetomi’s Chap Chap imprint on a 1998 album bearing Yoshizawa’s name. The duo played for nearly three hours that day leaving plenty of additional material worthy of widespread scrutiny, but Suetomi ended up tabling plans for a second release. Two decades later the Lithuanian label No Business brings the music to light as part of its ongoing Chap Chap reissue series.

Both bassists developed idiosyncratic and advanced approaches to solo improvisation early in their careers. Neither was a novice at tandem settings at the time of their meeting. Phillips made such encounters a semi-regular part of his output teaming at various times with Dave Holland, Peter Kowald and Barry Guy among others. Yoshizawa’s recorded dialogues were less numerous, but included memorable match-ups with Dave Burrell, Derek Bailey and Evan Parker alongside a busy docket spent collaborating with countrymen like Karou Abe and Keiji Haino. He was also a capable luthier and the instrument he fields here, an electric vertical five-string bass, is of his original design.

Split into two sections of approximately fifty-five and twenty-minutes, the performance is a riveting and elaborately-structured experience in its entirety. Both bassists employ amplification to further vary their tonal palettes, but to starkly varying degrees. Echo and decay are regular parts of the conversational equation. Spidery pizzicato clusters pour forth from respective corners, percolating and comingling in a bottom-end stew of bulbous low-frequency sound. Yoshizawa’s strings are distinguishable both in positioning and their malleable timbral properties, which repeatedly trade the recurring acoustic sharpness of Phillips’ more conventional set for an elastic resonating presence and consolidated weight particularly when the pair commence to jousting with bows.

Space and silence and spontaneous decisions directing the application of the same are indispensable components to the duo’s success. Even absent the visual aspects of the concert it’s still possible to sense the cues and communications that determine the action. The strata of arco drones laced with ambient electronics that occupy the middle of the first piece merge into a grayscale color field of somber string overtones. Phillips’ switch to scuttling fingers against by turns billowing and fulminating formations from Yoshizawa’s electricity-derived manipulations signals another seismic shift.

An encounter two years later yielded another date for P.S.F.. Some two years after that Yoshizawa took his own life and opportunities for edifying exchanges such as this one came to a sudden, disheartening halt. What remains of their partnership is a rare example of proverbial boys being boys as an advantageous arrangement.

Derek Taylor

Recorded live on the 5th April 1994 at Café Amores, Hofu, Yamaguchi, Japan by Takeo Suetomi / Concert produced by Takeo Suetomi